


whether for prayer, benediction, or malediction

by seriola



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, Storytelling, Viera, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-13
Updated: 2010-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7382194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriola/pseuds/seriola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I tell you this story so that you may avoid repeating the folly of Ljot, who thought herself above the Word and the Wood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	whether for prayer, benediction, or malediction

For the sake of our sisters, and the Wood who made you, listen:

 

 

In times past, when the Wood was younger and wilder, yet still more vast than She is now, a clan sought shelter within Her arms. From them grew Gloa Village. Perhaps you have heard of Gloa's daughters: among them was the famed salve-maker Koll, said to be taught by the Wood Herself. Blessed was Koll, and her daughter Thjr, and Thjr's daughter, Drofn, of whom the hunters still speak. Well did Drofn fare in the hunt and in family, for in turn she bore also a daughter, and called her Ljot. 

Ljot was a handsome viera, white of ear, dark of skin, with good, strong limbs capable of drawing a bow and easing a fever. For while she had the makings of a fine warrior, so too had she the healing gift of her forebear. And it was down this path that she chose to honor her village. Ljot knew her craft well. It was said that the Wood favored her as it had Koll, and it may have been so, for few in Gloa Village need suffer long from their ills before Ljot used potion and spell to cure them. 

I do not believe it. Or if it was truth, then she failed to do that gift the proper honors. For Ljot's weakness—can it be called so?—was in believing her first duty was to her healer's art, instead of in serving the Wood. The knowledge passed down from mother to mother she learned to good result, yet ever she sought to learn more. What need had she of hume medicines, of Nu Mou ways, which are not the viera's ways? Her people wondered, but while the villagers remained hearty and whole, they treated Ljot's interest in such outside matters as harmless.

What said the Wood to this has been lost to time.

(Even now, we do not chastise our children for the baubles that traders gift them. And few viera do not own some ornament made by outside hands. Was it I who helped to put this idea into your head? Did I permit too much? Have I, too, covered my ears and refused to hear the Wood?) 

The seasons passed, and it came to be that one autumn morning brought visitors to Gloa. They came bearing goods from their own distant village to sell and trade. So as the Green Word would have them do, the viera of Gloa welcomed them, and there came many days of lively commerce.

Yet when the last feast fire had been extinguished, all was not well, for there came a plague that stole amongst Gloa as Mist surrounds the mountains. It struck down the young and the old. It wasted the limbs of the warriors and the minds of the wise. The medicines of the salve-makers could not stop the illness. The spells of the healers failed to ease the suffering of the sick. Soon the villagers had fingers as sore as their hearts, from the constant pricking of the needles used to sew the shrouds for the dead.

The music of the Wood became a ceaseless dirge as She grieved for Her children. Pisek the Recorder preserved a portion of Her words, thus:

> Neither stone-cradle  
>  Nor the needles of war  
>  Nor yet the staff of battle  
>  Cut down my children so.  
> 
> 
> My sapling growths,  
>  My drought-dried seeds,  
>  Returned too soon under my boughs.

Daily the leaves fell, and the walkways of the village were littered with Her tears.

Now learned Ljot knew not only what was taught to her by her mothers but from books written by unknown hands beyond the Wood. Seeing her kinsfolk succumb to this malady, and her own art insufficient to the task, she thought to seek the aid of others: for she understood that those unfortunate who lived without might also have knowledge that the Wood did not, and that knowledge might be enough to save her people, though she must ignore the holy laws of the Green Word to do it. 

Ignoring the advice of the elders, she left her village, journeying for the first time from the Wood and into Ivalice.

The wind through the grass in the Ozmone Plains were not as the cradlesongs of the Wood; the songs the humes sang in praises of their gods at the foot of Bur-Omisace were harsh to Ljot's ears. But for the love of her people she searched ever onward for a cure. To the dry deserts of Jahara she went, to seek the aid of the Garif. To Rabanastre she went, to learn the ways of their chemists. She traveled to the sky-city of Bhujerba; and to Nabradia, famed for its green mages. She learned much that was new to her, and still more of that she ought never have learned.

But of the sickness that had lain the viera low, she had not a cure, though she studied long and spoke to many learned peoples, humes and Nu Mou and Helgas alike.

It happened one day that she chanced upon a Moogle who told of a plant with certain curative properties, much sought after amongst the humes of the desert. "But they dare not go," the Moogle said, "for the tribes there protecteth their land fiercely, and are as numerous as the grains of sand in the Sandsea."

Ljot said, "I am not afraid." For she had not forsaken the Wood to turn back while there was hope for her quest.

Of the struggles she faced when she reached the Sandsea, and her quest to find the flower, much has been recorded, though not by the viera. Suffice to say that she won the plant and the seeds to harvest more, and hurried to return to the Wood. But when she came to the borders of her village, she found it much altered: vines had grown over the walkways, moss covered the broken shrines. So too had nature reclaimed the flesh of long-fallen viera, leaving only bones.

No one had lived there for many years.

In venturing out of the Wood, Ljot had been seen by a hume. Desiring revenge for being denied entry to the village many years before, he had found the secret entrance and by black magics opened a path to slaughter all who remained there. Those who had not succumbed to the plague and would otherwise have remained whole, perished also. And yet if that hume had not found the way into the village of Gloa, still Ljot's quest would have been in vain—for her ears and mind had been polluted by the outside world, and without the wisdom of the Wood to guide her, she had all the while unknowing wandered the length and breadth of Ivalice for centuries.

 

 

I tell you this story, that you may avoid repeating the folly of Ljot, who thought herself above the Word and the Wood. Do not be fooled by this talk of necessary change! Though a plague strike us all again, still better that we hold fast and trust that She will provide, as she ever has.

There is still time, still one last grove of trees where you are my beloved sister, whom I would protect against all the sins of the outside world... No? Would you still walk forward, o sister mine, to learn what you must already know in your heart? The treachery of time, the stink of humes and their cities: all this is no song to replace the hymns of the Wood, Her gentle touch, the knowledge of all Her years.

I beg of you, do not do this thing. What of Mjrn; what of our mothers? Will you break their hearts as well as mine?

Would you cause the Wood to weep, as would we, over the loss of you?

Then there is nothing more to be said. Let me walk with you a little further, like this, and let me raise my hand, thus; and let it be a gesture of farewell to my sister, for if ever I should lay eyes upon you again, you will no longer be Fran, daughter of Eruyt Village, sister of Jote the Elder, and this hand will only be raised in malice to a stranger of the Wood, forever—

—Go, then, and do not keep your new world waiting.


End file.
